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Chicago Tribune

‘Music is not a recipe': Violinist Itzhak Perlman talks about putting his life into an autobiographical show

For once, Itzhak Perlman was in the audience, not onstage. Years ago, the violinist, conductor and pedagogue attended Billy Crystal's autobiographical one-man show, '700 Sundays.' He left inspired. 'I thought that it might be fun to do this with my life and music,' Perlman says. That seed sprouted into 'An Evening with Itzhak Perlman,' an autobiographical recital coming to the Chicago Theatre April 21. Technically, it's not a one-man show — Perlman will be joined by pianist Rohan de Silva, a longtime collaborator — but it's every bit as intimate, interspersing musical selections with personal anecdotes, photos, and clips from the 2017 documentary 'Itzhak.' If anything, the challenge will be confining Perlman's story to a single evening. A polio survivor, he was born in 1945 to Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Tel Aviv. Israel is now a major player in the world of classical music, churning out many a high-flying musician, but in Perlman's day, that wasn't so. That, atop Perlman's disability — he uses crutches and a motorized scooter — made him, in the eyes of many, an underdog. 'The Ed Sullivan Show' changed his life overnight. Appearing on the show for the first time in 1958, as a preteen, Perlman was brought to the attention of the faculty at Juilliard in New York, where he himself now teaches. His career since has more than proved his naysayers wrong, building a résumé and name recognition rivaled by few others in classical music and beyond. At nearly 80, Perlman still giddily transcends genre, whether playing klezmer, duetting with jazz pianist Oscar Peterson or appearing onstage with Billy Joel. Perlman connected with the Tribune from his home in New York to talk about his upcoming show at the Chicago Theatre. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Q: So much of your career is about interpreting the works of other artists — in your case, composers. For this show, in a way, your life is the artwork you're interpreting. How did you decide what you wanted to include, as opposed to what you wanted to keep private? A: That's a good question. All I know is that I know what I don't want to do and I know what I do want to do. When you think about it, there's so much stuff about anybody that you can read online. There's very little privacy. What this show does is give my personal point of view as to what was happening in my life. Q: It seems challenging to pick just a few pieces for this program. How did you begin to curate this show? A: Well, I don't want to tell you everything … but we tried to make the music fit the story. There were some stories from when I was developing as an artist, so of course I had to play those pieces: pieces I played for a contest, pieces I studied when I was 6 or 7 years old, pieces my teacher (the legendary Dorothy DeLay, who taught Perlman at Juilliard) gave me when she first met me, and so on and so forth. Q: You used the word 'development.' One of the things I admire about you is that you've continued to develop musically during your whole career, sometimes very publicly. For example, the documentary 'In the Fiddler's House' captured your experience learning klezmer for the first time, at a point when your classical career was already well established. How did you go about letting people into this intimate experience of learning an art form for the first time, with cameras rolling? A: When I was approached by PBS to host a show about klezmer, I had absolutely no experience playing it. But to be the host of a show sounded very, very good. There were three or four klezmer groups participating in the show. I met with them, and they asked, 'Would you like to jam with us?' I said, 'Gee, I don't know; I've never done it before.' But I'd heard that kind of sound growing up; it was not foreign to me at all. One thing led to another, and we started to play. (Eventually) they said, 'Why don't we do some (live) shows, and instead of being the host, you could be part of the show!' That's how it started to develop, and now it's been almost 30 years. We did a couple of concerts just two days ago, in Cleveland and near Washington. We're still having a fantastic time. There is a kind of improvisation involved in klezmer, (whereas) in classical music, there is very little improvisation. Instead, the improvisation is very subtle — it's musical improvisation, not so much a note improvisation. So, for me, this is something that I always look forward to. Q: Are there ways in which that freedom has inspired or changed your classical playing? A: I always say to my students, you don't play something now the same way you did yesterday. If you repeat the same piece over and over again, that's when the improvisation (becomes) so important: you still keep the interest of the piece in your head. To play a recital for the first time is good, but to play it for the second or third time? That's when it becomes a little bit of a challenge. … How do we play the Beethoven C minor Sonata or Kreutzer Sonata today, as opposed to five years ago? I always say that it's not like baking a cake, where you have that much flour, that much sugar. Music is not a recipe. It's maybe like an eating contest! It becomes spontaneous. Q: You mentioned your students. In fact, a former student of yours I'm excited about, Randall Goosby, is playing in Chicago soon. Being so attuned to the younger generation of violinists coming up, I'm curious if there's anything you've noticed about them that differs, maybe, from the students you taught when you first began teaching decades ago. A: I don't know if there is anything absolutely different today than before. All I can tell you is that the level of playing today is absolutely incredible. I've been lucky to teach extremely good musicians at the Juilliard School and Perlman Music Program, (which) my wife and I started 30 years ago. We always listen to the audition tapes, and they're mind-boggling. But that special 'thing' is just as rare as it used to be — this thing that makes you cry. Every now and then, you get that. Q: You're turning 80 this year. Why did you feel this stage of your career was the right time for an autobiographical show? A: Well, I've been doing this show for a while — like, two, three years. It's so I can give people a choice of what I can do. I can do a straight recital, or I can do something like this, (because) I love to talk to the audience. When I first started talking to the audience, there was a concert where I just felt like I wanted to play, and I didn't say anything. Then, I got a letter: 'I heard you play, and you didn't say anything.' People got so used to to me talking! So, this is just another experience of mine. So far, the audience has liked it. Well, either that, or they pretended that they liked it. (Laughs) Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.